By OcJim

If you wonder why you hate government, even while you receive social security payments, use Medicare for your ills, remain free from enslavement by foreign aggressors, drive on public roads, enjoy public-funded fire protection, drink reasonably clean water and breathe somewhat healthy air, rise above boring jobs through public education, or explore the wonders of El Capitan at Yosemite, it’s because of a concerted ultraconservative plan to hijack our country since the 1980s, funded by the richest Americans and championed by the Republican Party, using a insidious hate-government campaign.

In light of government benefits we enjoy, it seems stupid for anyone to hate government, but that doesn’t stop over 1,000 hate groups from operating in the US, a vast majority, anti-government “Patriot” groups. In fact, the Southern Poverty Law Center (SPLC) attributes their 61% rise from over a year ago to three things: changing racial demographics of the country, frustration over the lagging economy, and media propaganda that has the intention of making demons of minorities, government and government officials like President Obama.

Anti-government rhetoric is rampant. Listen to right-wing hate radio and the 24/7 hate-government channel, Fox News. Even mainstream media gives tacit credence to government attacks by never questioning Republican vilification of government. Hate radio and Fox use malicious slurs against Democrats in government, especially President Obama, calling the targeted:  “idiots, Nazis, communists, fascists and/or Satanists.” All three – hate radio, Fox, and mainstream media, by implicit acceptance — encourage Americans to distrust, fear and even hate government.

Being anti-government – now often radically so – is simply part of what it means to be a Republican. Ronald Reagan launched it with his rhetoric: “Government is not the solution; it is the problem.” Now Republican candidates for president recite the concept in a prescribed litany, and the chant has been established by anti-government thinks tanks, and revised by Republican consultants, for its demean-government effect. Manufacturing the rhetoric, most think tanks originally sprung up in the 1980s. They were funded by hundreds of millions of dollars coming from conservative philanthropists and the business community, wanting to erase FDR and LBJs safety net programs, programs kind to individual opportunity.

Monolithic corporations fund tens of thousands of lobbyists in Washington now, to the point that lobbyists write much of the pro-business legislation that both Republicans and Democrats initiate in Congress, even while Republican consultants devise ways to demean the government they are using for their own purposes.

The Koch brothers have become the libertarian poster boys of such funding, including think tanks, academic organizations, and lobbying groups with high-sounding patriotic names. They include the Cato Institute, Citizens for a Sound Economy, the Heritage Foundation, The Hudson Institute, the Heartland Institute, Americans for Prosperity, and the Reason Foundation. Don’t be fooled. They don’t care about your interests. They all work to promote libertarian causes of low taxes, deregulation, and denigration of government – all promoting their interests and trying to hide their agenda by scapegoating government.

While the Koch brothers, who inherited a vast fortune, oppose government as a matter of deep political principal, the opposition of corporations is based on total selfishness and exhibits rank hypocrisy. They oppose taxes or regulation that cut into their profits, but are perfectly willing to take handouts from the people in the form of subsidies and bailouts. The Bush administration was a pushover for the corporate wish list.

Indeed, the George W. Bush administration was the “wet dream” of plutocrats. The incurious and morally malleable Bush rammed through Congress 2 trillion dollars, accruing from 2001 to 2010 alone, of tax cuts for the rich and fought 2 wars on credit that brought vast caches of money for crony businesses. The result was huge deficits, many cases of business fraud and billions in taxpayer money lost, and a growing national debt, only now leading to a conservative cry that we can’t afford social spending and aid for vital state services like education, fire and police protection. With the Bush sabotage of government, including needless Katrina deaths, politicization of government, government privatization fraud, and defanged regulatory government agencies, a great case was made for government failure.

It continues to be a perfect scam: starve government for social spending, even vital needs, appoint incompetents to run it whenever you are in charge, hamstring it wherever you can, and use it politically to fight business regulation (of gas speculation and pollution, for example) and to help your rich benefactors.

Conservative think tanks, Republican talking heads, lobbyists, and Republican consultants were unified in making government the target for scapegoating, constituting the means to achieve right-wing causes, and pointing to it as the source of all evil. Disdain for government is the glue that holds together a diverse group of gun owners, libertarians, fundamentalist Christians, wealthy small farmers, fiscal conservatives and even rednecks in the South.

Pervasive propaganda chants are continually updated by Republican consultants like Frank Luntz, targeting government as the culprit:

• The fabrication that “Obama wants to take away your guns.”
• “High unemployment is because of government over-regulation of business.”
• EPA regulations are “job-killers.”
• “Not weaken environmental protections,” but “streamline” or “modernize.” It’s like    attacking “excess government.”
• “Cuts in social programs” were portrayed as simple “reining in out-of-control government spending,” and “reducing big government.”
• “Inheritance taxes” are “death taxes.”
• Doctor consultations with patients under Obama’s health care reform are “death panels.”
• “Job-killing” precedes anything Obama does like “Obamacare”

The success of the Republican political strategy is documented in recent polls, one finding that 70% of Americans believe that “government creates more problems than it solves.”

Republicans continue to pull on your leash and say, “Sick em, boy or Sick em, girl,” and you can snarl with them at their designated target – government.

Elections are coming up. Vote Republican and get another round of being led and kicked in the ribs?